As to downplaying the importance of sex research, I mean that on a certain level, sex research is more likely to be selected because it is sex research, not because it’s “weird” sex research. However, the truth is that if it being sex research makes one “laugh, then think,” then that seems like a valid criterion for inclusion. It may not be as weird as it’d have to be if it were within physics, but then physics isn’t as funny as sex (most of the time). I also see a lot of really stupid sex-related assertions written about — everything from undemonstrated claims about energy to patently misleading and biased social sciences research about porn — that in my view should get excoriated more than it is, but for the most part it’s not really funny research…there would be no “laugh” part of the equation. And perhaps more importantly, it’s just not the Ig Nobel’s job.

Good point about Milken and Hubbard.

I stand by my bewilderment over why the award for “literature” would be applied some years to “scientific literature” and whatever the other stuff should be called…literature in a more general sense…because they’re really not the same word, or not the same definition of the same word. But I do agree that seems like their reasoning! And it provides plenty of humor from year to year.

I just wanted to point out that, IMO, the awards they give for ridiculous claims serve a similar role to the (more common) awards they give for weird but valid science, simply in a different way. Of course, that doesn’t mean that all of the awards are necessarily ‘right’ choices (it’s always very subjective anyway); I’m just defending the idea in principle, not on a case-by-case basis. I do agree that there can be an issue with people not understanding what a given award really means, but I think there are two very good reasons for doing things the way they do:
- they assume that most people are intelligent enough to understand the awards, which I think is a more positive approach than assuming that most people need extra explanations to understand irony;
- the idea is to give awards to “research that makes people laugh, then think”: so it’s up to us to think what we want of the nominees.

I’m not sure I understand your point about the Ig Nobels downplaying the importance of sex research though: the majority of the awards are given for research that are valid but very obscure or just plain weird, and from the examples you quoted, I just don’t see how that’s different from the awards related to other fields of research, like, say, food science or medicine?

Finally, about the paranormal stuff: frankly, I just don’t see much of a difference between someone like L. Ron Hubbard and someone like Michael Milken (who got the 1991 economics prize for inventing junk bonds): at the end of the day, both were con artists operating on people’s beliefs, just not beliefs in the same things… Not to mention that ridiculing _both_ Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, etc. (with the economics prize) _and_ BP (with the chemistry prize) in 2010 could definitely be called “shooting fish in a barrel” too – but that didn’t make it any less funny.

(BTW, about the 1995 literature prize about rectal foreign bodies, since you were apparently wondering why it’s classified as literature: I think the literature prize is sometimes awarded as a prize for a – more or less – literary work, and sometimes as a prize for something related to scientific literature. Here, it would be the later, since it’s a review of the existing scientific literature on the subject.)

As for the recipients listed in your article… it seems like perfectly valid science because it IS perfectly valid science, and that’s why they received the prize: because it’s funny but also important.

I stand by my claim that the Ig Nobels, and science in general, often tends to downplay the importance of real sex research and be unaware of just how much shitty sex research is promulgated as real science. I admit that it is not, however, the job of scientists who don’t specialize in behavioral human sexuality commentary and activism, but DO specialize in making fun of science, to back away from sexuality just because it’s *my* sacred cow (and one that gives more milk because I gave it a name).

As a devotee of the paranormal, I also stand by my claim that singling von Daniken out is fairly ridiculous; while the Ig Nobels do a good job of satirizing “real” science that seems (at first glance, at closer look, or both) puzzling and pointless, they’re way out of their depth in using the awards as a forum to promote skepticism toward people like von Daniken. Their comments about “paranormal” science (i.e., made-up — at least in von Daniken’s case, and L. Ron Hubbard’s, and the like) just aren’t that clever. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel; they invariably take the easy route. Whereas their jokes about current economic issues and the like are, in my opinion, hilarious.

However, I believe you sound a bit outraged in your response to me.

What I would say in that regard is that the Ig Nobel awards display a particularly dry form of political and scientific humor. At times, their satire is brilliant. But they’re not the only ones with a dry sense of humor.